Midweek Musings

Happy to report that your humble blogger is safely ensconced in the Unplayable Lies Western HQ, though still with things to find and organize.  The mountain just reported 3" of fresh, though we haven't yet decided on whether that suffices to shoot for first chair.  

I'm going to blog just a couple of quick items for today, then figure out what's involved with this skiing thing.  Because, yanno, it's been a while.

PGA22, What Could Go Wrong? - No rest for the weary, With the ink barely dry on their formulaic Year-in-Review pieces, they now are require to pump out the obligatory predictions for the coming year (really, eight months, given we live in that wraparound world). But there's always interesting tidbits and rogue sentiments to be found in such classics of the genre as this from Dylan Dethier:

22 bold, weird and (hopefully) accurate 2022 PGA Tour season predictions

Bold AND weird, you say? 

1. The U.S. Team will win the Presidents Cup.

Let’s start on an extremely sturdy limb: Team USA will beat their International opponents in the Presidents Cup because they basically always do. And although their 2019 victory in Australia required a Sunday comeback, a burnt-out Royal Melbourne was decidedly unfriendly to the visiting American side. This year’s event at Quail Hollow should be better-suited for their big-stadium styles of play. Plus the U.S. has 12 players in the top 16 in the world. The International team has one.

Wow!  You do take risks, don't you.... Predicting that the U.S., with its 11-1-1 record in this event, will win a home game after an historic Ryder Cup rout?  

Dylan actually goes to the trouble of listing the potential International team members, and it's an impressive roster for sure.  Of course, it bears a passing resemblance to the prior thirteen rosters that have gone 1-11-1, so bold and weirs aren't my adjectives of choice.

Want more bold and weirdness?

2. Tiger Woods will play a PGA Tour event.

Other than occasional paparazzi shots from doctors’ appointments, we’ll likely next see Woods in public at the Genesis Invitational in February, where he could return to the scene of his crash and turn the page, one year later. After that we should see Woods at the Players Championship for his World Golf Hall of Fame induction.

I doubt he’ll play before Augusta National, and even that could be a long shot. But if he continues to progress on his current schedule, we’re going to see Tiger Woods tee it up on the PGA Tour in 2022. Count on it.

Look, it's an interesting guessing game, about which none of us unfortunately has a clue.  Just to be contrarian I'll stick my my prediction that Tiger's next start will be in the 2022 Father-Son.

But Dylan is far too modest, in that he has actually buried a bold prediction within his rather anodyne musing about Tiger.  Do you, Dear Reader, expect to see Tiger in L.A. for the Genesis?  Because I would argue that his history is to not show unless he has a compelling economic interest and, further, that in view of the ties to the accident, that that is the last place Tiger will want to be.

Here's a couple to think through as a pair:

4. We’re destined for some delicious hot-mic moments.

We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of Justin Thomas’ unfortunate hot-mic moment from last Tournament of Champions. We’ve just passed the two-year anniversary of Patrick Cantlay’s extremely entertaining hot-mic moment at the 2020 TOC. But this year? We’re getting more. That’s because we’re getting much more golf, period, thanks to the new ESPN+ deal which is revolutionizing PGA Tour Live, basically quadrupling the amount of streaming coverage and getting more cameras — and more microphones — on players when they might not quite expect it.

5. ESPN+ is going to rule.

It’s cheaper than the old PGA Tour Live. When you sign up, you get every other piece of ESPN+ content, too. The streams will show more groups, more players, more hours, and they’ll be synthesized like a broadcast, which should help pacing. Look, nobody is going to argue that Thursdays and Fridays on the PGA Tour are edge-of-your-seat television. But the core demographic of “yeah, lemme throw this on in the background at work and maybe bet on a few matchups while I’m at it” should find this change extremely satisfying.

The next person I meet excited about the additional streaming content will also be the first.... But sure, when your thoughts turn to 2022 no doubt you're most excited about watching those early groups on Thursday morning in Palm Springs, right?

6. The Genesis Scottish Open will be the schedule’s best addition.

It’s always been a joy to get a taste of ‘cross-the-pond golf in the lead-up to the Open Championship, but the crescendo will feel even better now that it’s official. The PGA Tour-European Tour (DP World Tour, we should say) Strategic Alliance has yielded something great: The Genesis Scottish Open, a PGA Tour event the week before the Open at St. Andrews. The final rounds will be broadcast on CBS and everything! Everybody loves to watch Scottish golf. Now we have more of it. Sure, next year we can get greedy about holding this event at a linksier course, but let’s take this step by step and celebrate the wins where they come.

Is Dylan aware that this event has been there all along?  And, while it might be on CBS, it'll be on CBS in the morning... I would think any excitement would be tempered as we wait to see if it draws a better field with PGA Tour co-sanctioning, because I'm unconvinced. 

Also funny is the shade he threw at the venue, though you'll note that it's actually not named.  The venue in question is Tom Doak's Renaissance Club which, while located in linksy North Berwick, is built on property that veers inland from the proper links turf.  It's "linksy" but not a pure links, at least in the opinion of insufferable purists.... As we've discussed a few times but not recently, there aren't that many links that are appropriate for this event, but that's a discussion we can have in July.

Should we get to some predictions about which folks might actually care?

12. The Saudi Golf League will continue to be more smoke than fire.

Until a rival league siphons off several big names from the PGA Tour, they just won’t find much traction. And thus far, they haven’t siphoned off several big names. The Tour seems to have ceded ground in certain battles, like approving waivers for pros to head to this year’s Saudi International, but they seem in good position to win the war — or at least this iteration.

Several?  I agree with Dylan's sense of things, but I'll also note that Jay is looking awfully beleaguered... And kinda beclowning himself, so some of it is good fun:

13. Bryson vs. Brooks will continue, just not so overtly.

There was a notion that this fall’s Match between Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka would put the whole thing to bed. And maybe it did in like, a branding sense. But a close watch of the proceedings suggests that nothing actually got resolved. These two didn’t really communicate in any meaningful way. They certainly didn’t connect. With Koepka’s continued surliness and DeChambeau’s expanded influencer/vlogger/Long Drive status, their gap in personalities only seems to be getting wider. As a result I don’t think we’ll get any Mich Ultra ads on the subject — but there’s going to be spiciness nonetheless. Especially if we finally get the tournament pairing in contention we’ve been wishing for.

Yeah, we know.  They don't like each other and their both correct in that opinion.  But it's not like either of them had a great so the better bit would be to predict how they'll perform at their actual day job.

Dylan does have some actual predictions, a few of which are bold.  Not this one particularly:

7. Patrick Cantlay is going to win a major championship

We haven’t seen Cantlay play a round of stroke-play golf since the Tour Championship, and he hasn’t finished better than T15 in any of his last nine majors, but we’re assuming he has been doing a little practicing and is otherwise the same stone-cold killer that showed up in the playoffs and Ryder Cup. As such, I like his chances to bag a big one more than anybody else on Tour this year.

I'm still trying to decide how good I think Patrick is, but he is very much on the clock as far as majors are concerned.

Now, here's where Dylan gets edgier:

18. Someone’s going to win the Career Grand Slam.

Only five pros have done it: Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen. But a few more are close, and this is the year. Maybe it will be Rory McIlroy at Augusta National. The idea of Jordan Spieth winning at Southern Hills sounds plausible. Phil Mickelson winning the U.S. Open at Brookline seems only marginally more likely than Koepka winning both the Masters and the Open Championship, or Morikawa winning the Masters and the U.S. Open. Maybe J.T. will win three of ’em. Maybe Schauffele will do ’em all in one year. One way or another, it’s happening.

OK, if we're picking a guy to reel off three of them, I'd go with Rahmbo way ahead of JT.... But Rory at Augusta?  Heh, that's a good one, but I just hope Rory is sufficiently in control to not try the ripped shirt look at Augusta.

As an aside, even Dylan seems to agree with my point above:

20. By year’s end, the top three players in the world will be Europeans.

While we’re buying Hovland stock, let’s unleash a proper prediction: At the end of the year, despite the grousing about a Ryder Cup blowout and American dominance, the OWGR will look like this:

1. Jon Rahm

2. Viktor Hovland

3. Rory McIlroy

Plot twist: There won’t be another Euro inside the top 20. Still, that elite squad will fly the flag for the continent. That’s pretty good, right?

I'll stipulate to the Spaniard, but I think he's a little out there on the other two.  But, per this related item, he's all-in on Viktor:

19. Viktor Hovland AND Matthew Wolff will have better seasons than Collin Morikawa.

What did we decide to call these guys again — the Big Three? The Little Three? The Young Three? Either way, Morikawa has jumped out to a seemingly insurmountable career lead, claiming two majors, four Tour wins, a European Tour title, Ryder Cup heroics and likely soon the title of World No. 1. It’s going to be impressive, then, to watch his compatriots battle back with some stellar play of their own. Matthew Wolff is decidedly back, and even if he plays a limited schedule of events I expect that he’ll contend as often as not and plow his way back towards the top 10 in the world.

Hovland finished 2021 better than anyone, winning in Mayakoba and the Bahamas in his final two starts, so all he has to do is more of [gestures vaguely] that.

This isn’t me hating on Morikawa, who is obviously a terrific player and owns the most important and durable of all golf skills: elite iron play. But as they tiptoe towards their mid-20s the back-and-forth between the Three Musketeers will continue.

This will be good fun, one assumes.  But I'll make a similar prediction , to wit, that Morikawa secures his Career Grand Slam before Rory AND Jordan.

At Golfweek Larry Bonahan has his own predictions, though he's not as PGA-centric as Dylan.  Here, though, the two are in agreement:

Norman, Saudi tour will fall apart

Listen, the PGA Tour is far from perfect, and the proposed Saudi tour addresses the issue of the best players in the world not getting together enough on the PGA Tour. But the backlash against Saudi Arabian human rights issues as well as the PGA Tour slowly bending over backward to undermine the Saudi tour should be enough for that proposal to disappear by the middle of the year. At least for now.

Hmmmm, predicting the Shark to fail, eh?  You must be the kind of guy that thinks the sun rises in the East?

Of course, there are these two differing thoughts, first Larry:

Tiger will play in 2022 British Open

We don’t know for sure yet when Woods will play competitive golf coming off the injuries from his serious car accident. The Masters might be a logical target, but you have to know that the British Open at St. Andrews, where Woods won the Claret jug in 2000 and 2005, is a definite start on his list.

Whereas Dylan was a wee bit bolder:

22. Tiger Woods will win the Open Championship.

We’re done doubting this guy.

Yeah, I'm mostly done caring about the guy.... 

PGA Tour, LPGA will announce a mixed-team event

Okay, it might not be played in 2022, but this has been simmering too long not to happen. I can suggest many courses in the Coachella Valley that could host an early December event, by the way.

Ort, yanno, wait for the Prez Cup to lay another egg and make that a mixed event.  Yeah, it makes far too much sense for it to ever happen....

Golf Digest doesn't seem to have a comparable set of predictions, though they do have this on dates to circle on our calendars, most interestingly this one:

Feb. 3-6: Saudi International

In any other year, the Saudi event—which was formerly a part of the DP World Tour (which was formerly the European Tour)—was merely a curiosity to American fans, mostly to see which PGA Tour players were drawn to the Middle East for sizeable appearance fees. This year, it seems far more compelling now that the talk of rival tours has heated up, and the PGA Tour has given permission to its players to jump on their private jets (and pad their bank accounts) in what is now an Asian Tour event. Among them is Phil Mickelson, who will miss Pebble Beach, where he’s won five times.

It just so happens that there's news on that front, courtesy of Geoff.  First, the rebranding:

After intense, last-minute negotiations, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia has been named title sponsor of the Saudi International. Terms of the deal were not announced.

This means the full tournament name is the Public Investment Fund Saudi International Powered by SoftBank Investment Advisors, or, as they might want to call it around the LIV Golf team’s Slack: PIFSIPSIA.

Those Saudis continue their unrelenting effort to grow our game, so good on them.

It also so happens that touring professionals like this guaranteed money thing:

More alarming for the PGA Tour and European Tour should be the continued addition of players to February’s field. Besides now having commitments from five of the world top 10, they’ve added Tony Finau, Patrick Reed, Matthew Wolff, Cameron Smith, Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert. The allure of the Asian Tour!

Didn't they used to play around that time on the Monterrey Peninsula?  That field will be historically weak, no?  

2022 In Gear - Geoff has some good fun with this, which serves mostly as marker for what comes next.  For reasons unknown to your humble blogger, Cally and TaylorMade introduced their new clubs on the same day.

For TaylorMade, it's all about the carbonwood:

— Eric Patterson (@EPatGolf) January 4, 2022

Details on Cally's new drivers can be found here, though the more detailed promises seem to relate to their new line of Chrome Softs:

So, Callaway listened. Without changing the spin profile at all, Callaway was able to increase

driver ball speed by 0.7 mph due to the new core in the 2022 version.

According to Callaway, the new Chrome Soft X LS increases driver speed by 0.8 mph, reduces driver spin by 130 rpm, and reduces iron spin by 120 rpm compared to the previous version.

 

Amusingly, they spend a lot of effort assuring us that they'll no longer manufacture their balls with those pesky off-center cores:

Callaway’s Chrome Soft, Chrome Soft X and Chrome Soft X LS golf balls are not only getting X-rayed for centeredness of their cores, but every layer inside the golf balls is getting the same precision treatment.

It won’t surprise you to hear that the core of a golf ball should be directly in the center. If the core is leaning one way or the other within the golf ball, it can affect important parameters such as spin, distance and direction.

Most modern golf balls, though, have more than just a core and a cover; they have multiple layers. According to a recent study by Callaway, it’s not just off-center cores that can cause problems in performance. Apparently, if the other mantle layers are off-center, there can also be drastic negative effects.

The study showed that an off-center inner and outer mantle layer can cause a difference of 2.7 mph in ball speed, 2.1 degrees of launch angle, 1200 rpm of spin, 4.8 yards of distance and 16.7 yards of dispersion. To be clear, that was using the same exact golf ball, under the same hitting conditions, simply hit at different orientations.

Now they tell us....

But the gist of Geoff's point, very much one to keep in mid, is that these guys want to have it both ways, as captured in this two sentence 'graph:

Traditionally when any form of rulemaking is discussed to keep certain skills and courses relevant, the manufacturers claim they’ve maxed out the technology. When they want your $600, the technology is breakthrough, stealth, AI infused and almost guaranteed to add distance and lower spin.

Exactly.

On that note, I shall leave you and get on with my ski season.... See you later this week.